"Spot the difference"

To Fix The Image In Memory 1977-82 Vija Cemlins shows how diverse today's artists can be when duplicating original objects, by using alternative mediums. Cemlins replicates stones with painted bronze. She challenges the viewer to decipher which is the real object and which is the copy.

Carol Sowden

"Once more with feeling"

Article, Crafts magazine, issue March/April By Glenn Adamson and Corinne Julius, demonstrates how important it is for the core craftsman to keep the craft of reproduction and copying alive.

"In the education context, while the craft programmes in the US and here in the UK have increasingly prioritized creativity over skill, apprenticeship training places in Scandinavia and Italy has continued to rely on restrictive pedagogical techniques, including copying. Since the 1950's at least, America and British studio metal smiths and glass artists have had pilgrimages to Stockholm and Murano, where they learn from artisans whose work consists mainly of making innumerable renditions of long established designs."

Carol Sowden

It is a resent theme to reproduce artwork, its has come with the postmodern period. The recreations of Warhols work (above) by Banksy (below) show evidence for this. Pastiche is very popular.

Within postmodernism there are lots of artworks being reproduced, as one aspect of postmodernism is to rob existing styles and then plaster them with a new meaning. A couple of examples of art work that has been reproduced and then given a new identity are Fuck Face by Jake and Dinos Chapman. 1994. Which can be found at: gala.univ-perp.fr/~dgirard/Exposes/yba/yba09.jpg
The other is, Ronald McDonald as Michelangelo's David. 2006. Which can be found at: http://fx.worth1000.com/entries/337375
Some may think that the artist has defaced and ruined these iconic images, but I like these parodies and they way that a new identity can be given to these timeless classics so they can be enjoyed in a different way and by new generations.

Gina Stockwell

I have explored the work of Banksy, and I know that with some examples of his works, he has used another piece of art work to manipulate, to make into his own, and update into the twenty first century.
For example Banksy has used a typical ten pound note, and usually where it would say Bank Of England, this has been changed to Banksy of England, and where the Queen's head is usually has been replaced with the head of the late Princess Diana. This imitated and reproduced money was printed and displayed at a cash machine, that had been created by using his style of stencils and cans of spray paint, on a wall in Farringdon, London. The money is stuck to the wall in a motion that it is overflowing freely out of the machine. With the controversy that specualted the death of Princess Diana, this is a very questionable and somewhat disturbing reproduction.

Banksy being a street artist, when it comes to submitting work into galleries, he just uses other artists work to paint and graffiti over.
' If you want to survive as a graffiti writer; when you go indoors, your only option is to carry on painting over things that don't belong to you there either.'
Banksy has taken such pieces such as Vincent Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers,' and Claude Monet's 'Lily pond,' then recreated them. 'Sunflowers,' painted by Van Gogh, was shown as rich and blooming, whilst they have been shown by Banksy as neglected and dead, with the petals around the base of the varse.
Monet's 'Lily pond,' is now a scene, like a canal in Britain. Trollies upturned after being thrown in, as well as traffic cones, littering the waters. Banksy has turned late eighteenth century paintings, into contemporary works of art, that people can relate to!

' My sister threw away loads of my drawings when I was a kid and when I asked her where they were she shrugged and said, "Well its not like they're ever gonna be hanging in the Louvre is it?"
The next extreme for Banksy was 'Making an exhibition of yourself.' This basically means taking a piece of famous art, transforming it, then submitting, without permisson to famous a gallery. One example being an imitation of Andy Warhol's Campbell soup. Banksy took the original idea from Warhol and then changed it from Campbell's to Tesco's Value cream of Tomato soup, in the exact packaging that it would come in a Tesco's supermarket. This was then mounted and framed, and he then snuck it into the Museum of Modern art, New York, where it lasted seven days, before being discovered and taken down.
'After sticking up the picture I took five minutes to watch what happened next. A sea of people walked up, stared and left looking confused and slightly cheated. I felt like a true modern artist.'

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/3250124/Banksy-defies-the-credit-crisis-as-his-canvases-fetch-over-350000-at-auction.html

Banksy,2005, Banksy Wall and Piece, Century Publishings.

- Lisa Haith

Continuing W. Benjamin

I think it's worth noting this quote on reproduction from the same text by Walter Benjamin:

To an ever greater degree the work of art reproduced becomes the work of art designed for reproducibility. From a photographic negative, for example, one can make any number of prints; to ask for the 'authentic' print makes no sense. But the instant the criterion of authenticity ceases to be applicable to artistic production, the total function of art is reversed. Instead of being based on ritual, it begins to be based on another practice -- politics.

There's an book by Theodor W. Adorno (Aesthetic Theory) that tries to, and I believe in quite a few areas manages to, contradict Benjamin's arguments or state that they are limited.

(However this book is quite heavy to read, for this reason I will not try to pick out quotes. But anyone interested the book should in all be a nice point for research if theories are of interest (I have not read the entire book).)

Elisa

Interesting text - Seeing and consciousness, particularly on the gaze and introspection, nice alternative to the ususal focus on the male gaze. Are there any images we can look at that focus on the narrative of psyche, gaze and meditation or transient transendental spaces?